Eight
The bonded term of work (the “TERM”) shall be equal to the number of years for which the SPONSOR pays fees of tutelage and board at the Academie Sieuxerr on behalf of the SCHOLAR.
For the full length of said TERM the SCHOLAR will reside within the royal palace at Szolduka or another residence of the SPONSOR’s choosing, and will not travel without the SPONSOR’s permission.
—From a contract between the Crown of Tatranca and the first-year scholar Tybost Peletier, stored in the archives of the Academie Sieuxerr
“All right,” said Moyna. “What comes first?”
“Haemostasis,” said Symon. “Did I pronounce that right?”
Moyna nodded. She and her younger brother were speaking Camarran, as they tried to do when alone together.
It forced them to practice the vocabulary they’d never learned at home, and which they’d need when they were healers in Camar.
The word-root for blood in Camarran was the same as the word-root for river.
So many things in Camar, the land of water-mages, came back to the rivers.
“Symon.” Moyna nodded down at her hand, which was freely seeping blood from the neat, deep cut across the back of the third finger. “Haemostasis?”
“Right! Yes.”
Symon laid his hand on Moyna’s wrist. His eyes, the same hooded cool grey as Moyna’s own, went vacant with concentration.
Moyna kept her hand flat and still on the desk.
They were in Symon’s room in the second-year residence hall; Symon had his own practical exam the next day, and he’d cajoled Moyna into playing study partner over the dinner hour.
Her brother’s magic was slow, painstaking. Moyna felt like the nursery teachers you saw on the street trying to persuade a group of dawdling waist-high children to hurry up. But she kept her mouth shut and let him work.
The welling of Moyna’s blood stopped. Symon picked up a square of gauze and dabbed, soaking up what was there, clearing the field.
“Good,” Moyna said. She looked at the white flash of her phalanx amongst the barely-there scraps of red muscle.
So. She hadn’t gathered the guts to fling herself off a rooftop this morning.
All she’d managed to do was to keep her mouth shut during the first case of the Grand Exam.
Hare fever, of all things. She was sure the others didn’t suspect her; it was amazing she’d known the answer in the first place.
If Jehan hadn’t figured it out, then they’d have likely failed the case.
Only one case of the five could be failed.
Once your group failed two, you had to repeat the year.
She couldn’t rely on silence being enough a second time.
Easy enough to sabotage a healing from the inside and blame her nerves, or lack of sleep, or simply losing her grip on her magic at a crucial moment. Would she actually go through with it?
I don’t know, Moyna thought. She hated not knowing. And she’d hate herself for being too weak to try, and she’d hate herself for the selfishness of trying.
Remembering Ysabel’s body made everything seem futile and small.
So what if Moyna did deliberately fail her Grand Exam, and win herself another year in Sieuxerr?
It would only be extending her journey toward the same unwanted finish line.
She was destined for the city of Greteford, where her parents had grown up and met and married.
Legally she owed its city council, her Academie sponsors, five years.
And her family fully intended to remain in Camar for the rest of Moyna’s life.
That was the point of anthem larks. She should accept it.
Besides, even if she only did five years in Camar and then ran guiltily back to the Blue City, she’d still be a healer.
Forever. No matter how much you disliked the work itself, no matter how much you dreaded the thought of spending decades doing it .
. . the only escape from being a healer was the swift, brutal path that Moyna had refused, that morning, to take.
“Next, check for anything contaminating the wound, or any microvive,” said Symon. “Which there won’t be, because this is a fresh cut made with a clean scalpel.”
“But perhaps my skin was dirty?”
Symon gave a put-upon-younger-brother sort of sigh. “I won’t be able to feel anything that subtle, Momo. No, shut up, I know. Do it anyway.”
Feel for microvive. Then collect and attach the ends of the severed tendon from where they’d sprung away down their tunnels. Then heal the flesh, pulling it together from the base of the wound and moving upward to the skin.
Moyna held her own magic in an anaesthetic pinch on the four nerves that supplied the finger; Symon wasn’t skilled enough yet to handle that along with the healing itself.
So she couldn’t feel any pain, though the shifting of her tendon as Symon’s magic coaxed the two ends back into alignment was always odd.
“Good,” she said, when Symon was done. She flexed her hand back and forth. The scar would fade. “See? You’ll be fine in the exams. And then you’ll only have three more years until you graduate and join the rest of us in Greteford, and we can work together.”
“Only,” said Symon, rolling his eyes, but he looked brighter.
Symon Apprice, secondborn to his parents. Just as trapped as Moyna was. But she’d slice off two of her own fingers and refuse all healing before she said anything to spoil his love of the work. Because Symon did love it, she was sure.
Or . . . nearly sure.
Could you ever be? Ysabel’s corpse bobbed to the top of her mind again.
Clement was convinced, and their certainty was convincing.
But Moyna knew better than anyone that Brodier had been right: You could be a shining light of achievement, top ten in the cohort in every exam, and be hiding a deep bitter core of misery.
She left Symon’s room promising that she’d go and do her own study, but it was a lie.
Her mind was wet gauze tied in a knot, squeezing tight, dripping indecision and dread.
She didn’t need to study. She needed distraction.
Jehan would be ideal under other circumstances—she remembered him fondly as wild in bed, and deliciously eager to please—but Jehan was now part of her Grand Exam group, and part of Ysabel’s death.
Instead she found Charlon Paul in the showers and propositioned him.
Charlon turned around in the spray and blinked at her.
His wet hair was plastered down his broad neck and the front of his chest as if someone were experimenting with a design for new veins.
Moyna raised an impatient eyebrow. The two of them had chatted a few times this spring while making cups of tea in the common room during study breaks.
Charlon was not currently burdened by romantic entanglements, and was no more deranged by stress than the average fifth-year scholar.
Moyna dropped her towel as further encouragement and went to turn on the shower next to his, and Charlon blurted, “Sure, all right. Yes.”
He was a good choice. He was strong enough to hold her up to fuck her, the solid heat of his belly and arms was wonderful, and Moyna only slipped once on the rough tiles, sending them both into snorts of laughter.
She was grinding with muzzy satisfaction against Charlon’s face, standing with one leg slung over his shoulder as he knelt, well on her way to her second orgasm, when two other scholars entered the showers.
Amelie Viart made a fastidious face and looked away, cheeks pinkening—honestly, how did you make it through five years of the Academie and still have the slightest sense of shame or mystery when it came to the human body?
—and Percy Surreau yelped, “Seriously,” and threw a sponge which bounced off Charlon’s back.
To Charlon’s credit, he didn’t move. Perhaps face-down in Moyna’s cunt seemed the safest place to be for the moment. “We have rooms for a reason.”
“Come back in ten minutes, if you’re so bothered,” said Moyna.
Percy rolled their eyes in a very similar way to Symon, but they and Amelie retreated.
“Ten minutes?” said Charlon, muffled.
“You want another as well? I can help things along.” She waggled her fingers.
It was . . . half a joke. Using magic to coax your partner back to hardness, or to manipulate orgasm, wasn’t strictly taboo, but it was considered very vulgar.
Whorish, in fact. Moyna would have bet half of Alys Tixerrant’s fortune that most healers did it in the privacy of their own bedrooms. And showers.
There were stories about almost-mages whose magic was below the threshold for testing into the Academie, and so were never formally trained, but who apprenticed themselves in secret and became expensive escorts who swore their clients to secrecy.
Honestly, you could probably do a lot worse when it came to an enjoyable career.
Charlon gave a rough laugh. “Don’t tease, Apprice,” he said, and went back to what he was doing.
Moyna hummed and tilted her head back. This was fine.
She was still tipping inexorably toward a job she didn’t want, in a place she didn’t want to be, doing the work she’d begun to hate in second year and which made her dully sick with anticipation every morning.
But for now she could just be—here. Nerves and skin and flesh.
Warm water streamed across her eyelids, washing her thoughts away.